Sealed LP: Tomita: Pictures At An Exhibition

$

75

Tomita

Pictures At An Exhibition

FACTORY SEALED LP

Format: Sealed Album

Country: U.S.A.

Record Company & Release Number: RCA Red Seal: ARL1-0838

Original release date: 1975

Bar Code: NONE

Condition of the cover: Mint

Condition of this sealed album: Sealed - Assumed Mint

My inventory number: 208248B

Shipping Weight: 1 pounds, 1 ounces

Notes:

This Sealed Album came from a record store in Allentown, Pennsylvania called "Phantasmagoria" which went out of business in 1978. I purchased most of their unsold inventory several years later when I owned "Music Madness" - a new & used record store in Catasauqua, Pennsylvania.

Since this Sealed Album was part of Phantasmagoria's inventory when they closed in 1978, it cannot be any newer than a 1978 pressing. Being a Sealed Album, I cannot tell specifically what pressing it is prior to 1978. In some cases, hype stickers might help to determine if it is a first pressing, but I cannot be any more specific.

Phantasmagoria used round colored stickers to indicate the price of their inventory. They had a sign on the wall with the color sticker combinations for the customers to use so they knew the price of what they were purchasing. Some of the Sealed Albums still have these stickers on them, and in some rare cases, the stickers are written on. Some of the Sealed Albums have prices on them. This is the price you would have paid for this Sealed Album in 1978 if you had bought it at Phantasmagoria. If this Sealed Album has a price on it, please don't confuse the price with the current value for this Sealed Album.

- - -

• Promenade
• The Gnome
• Promenade
• The Old Castle
• Promenade
• Tuileries
• Bydlo
• Promenade
• Ballet of the Chicks in Their Shells
• The Two Jews
• Limoges/Catacombs
• Cum Mortuis in Lingua Mortua
• Baba Yaga (Hut on Fowls' Legs)
• Great Gate of Kiev

• Ed Begley: Engineer
• Marian Conaty: Engineer
• Plasma Music, Inc.: Producer
• J.J. Stelmach: Art Direction
• Tomita

Album Review for "Pictures At An Exhibition"

Review by Jim Brenholts, All Music Guide

Isao Tomita has a real talent for transcribing classical music on the synthesizer. He adds much of his own personality to the new arrangements so they are not straight technical knockoffs. Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition takes on new meanings under Tomita's sensitive and sensible rendering. He is not re-inventing the wheel so all of the original drama and humor is there but the new hooks and riffs have moxy and their own senses of drama and humor. The ambient atmospheres and sci-fi textures give this version an outer space persona. It has become a stroll through an art gallery deep in the Milky Way. This is not quite Tomita's best work but it is close.

Tomita biography by John Bush

Pioneering Japanese composer and synthesizer expert Isao Tomita bridged the gap between note-by-note classical/electronic LPs like Switched-On Bach and the more futuristic, user-friendly interfaces developed in the 1970s. After creating one of the first personal recording studios with an array of top synthesizer gear in the early '70s, Tomita applied his visions for space-age synthesizer music to his favorite modern composers -- Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel -- though his recordings steered a course far beyond the sterile academics of Wendy Carlos and other synthesists. Born in Tokyo in 1932, Tomita grew up in China as well as Japan, studying composition and music theory as well as art history at Keio University. After graduation in 1955, Tomita began composing film, television, and theater music. He was awarded frequently during the '50s and '60s, and became perhaps the most well-known contemporary Japanese composer.

By the early '70s, Tomita was introduced to the seminal work of synthesizer gurus Wendy Carlos and Robert Moog, sparking his own interest in synthesized music. In 1973, he formed the electronic collective Plasma Music with musicians Kinji Kitashoji and Mitsuo Miyamoto, and spent more than a year stocking his home studio with electronics gear (including the Moog III used for Carlos' Switched-On Bach). Tomita's first album, 1974's Snowflakes Are Dancing, electrified the Japanese public and even translated to an American classical audience, where it was nominated for four Grammy Awards. Successive albums Pictures at an Exhibition, The Firebird Suite, and his masterpiece Holst: The Planets infused the classical-synthesizer fusion craze of the '70s with genuinely exciting, futuristic music instead of the bland, note-by-note translations favored by less visionary musicians. The Planets re-invoked the connection between synthesizer music and science fiction first broached in the 1956 film Forbidden Planet.

Tomita began incorporating digital synth and early MIDI setups with 1982's Grand Canyon, and completely gutted his studio during the next two years during the transition from analog to digital with his Casio Cosmo system. Though he recorded more sparingly than in the '70s, Tomita made frequent appearances at enormous concerts, including his 1984 Austrian show Mind of the Universe before 80,000 people, and at the Statue of Liberty centennial celebration two years later. Tomita was also awarded the honorary presidency of the Japan Synthesizer Programmers Association. In 2001, Tomita composed background music for the Tokyo Disney Sea theme park. He continued composing music for Japanese films throughout the 2000s, and released three albums available as SACD Hybrid Multichannel discs during the 2010s. In 2015, Tomita won the Japan Foundation Award in honor of his long-standing influence on the electronic music world. On May 5, 2016, Tomita died of cardiac failure at the age of 84. At the time of his death, he had been working on Dr. Coppelius, a musical dedicated to Japanese rocket scientist Hideo Itokawa.

This sealed album is being sold as a collector's item and cannot be returned due to manufacturer's defects. It may be almost impossible to replace many of the sealed albums I am selling. If I am aware of any defects, I will list it in the notes and pictures above.

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All album reviews, credits and artist biographies are from AllMusic Guide. If you haven't been to their web site, you should check it out. It's one of the most comprehensive music references on the internet. In some cases, credits may include reissue (CD) information. Obviously any credits referenced to CDs might not apply to this release.

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